Data Privacy Statement

Data Privacy Statement

Thank you for your interest in the HEIBRiDS websites, which are hosted by Technische Universität Berlin (TUB). The protection of the personal data of visitors of TUB websites is very important for us. Therefore we want to inform you about data security at our university.

Subject of Data Privacy

Data privacy covers personal data. According to art. 4 par. 1 of DSGVO this are data referring to an identified or identifiable individual, hence all data which could be used to identify you. This applies for data such as name, private address, e-mail address, telephone number but also to usage data such as your IP address.

Of course HEIBRiDS and Technische Universität Berlin observe the legal requirements of data privacy and other applicable regulations.

We are committed to ensure that you can trust us concerning your personal data. Therefore transfers of personal or sensitive data are encrypted. In addition our websites are protected against damage and unauthorised access by technical measures.

General Data Privacy

(1) If you visit a TUB website or download data of these sites, the following information will be stored in a log file: your IP address, date and time of the site access, visited website resp. name of the downloaded file, amount of transferred data, “user agent-string” of your web browser, the website from which you were referred to the current website or file and a status notification of successful or unsuccessful access. The non-anonymised data will be deleted after two weeks and will not be archived.

(2) This data will only be used for non-commercial purposes: it will only be reviewed manually if necessary for fault analysis, optimisation or investigation of abuse or performance issues.

(3) For data collection and storage we employ cookies. Cookies are small data packets consisting of text and are stored by your web browser upon website visit. They cause no harm on your device – neither do cookies contain viruses nor do they give us the option to spy on you. We employ two types of cookies: session cookies and permanent cookies. Session cookies are deleted when you close your web browser. Permanent cookies have a maximum life time – in our case up to one day.

Cookies are employed to ensure an optimal usage of the websites for visitors and editors. The employed cookies are not used for the tracing of user activities or analysis of behaviour. They are only employed where there is a technical requirement or they make more sense than other techniques such as the recognition of the login status of visitors and editors or the storage of information such as “display mobile version of the website”. The usage of the websites is possible without cookies most of the time. For features resp. sites which require a login the employment of cookies is necessary.

You can configure your web browser to delete stored cookies.

(4) Within TUB websites external websites or services are embedded in some cases. The integrated search function refers to a website of the Google for example. In this case only the search terms are transferred.

With techniques like “iframes” external website contents are embedded at certain points. The providers of the websites may register, store and as the case may be process and relay your data. Personal data is not part of this data as long as you do not submit it using a web form. Otherwise the external providers can only retrieve information as it is registered for normal website visits, such as IP address, rough whereabouts, employed browser, the website you are coming from and so on.

Extent of Data Collection and Storage

For the usage of our websites the registration of your personal data is not necessary in general. For TU Berlin to fulfil requested services, we require personal data in some cases. This applies especially for the individual replying to e-mails, provision of special services or applications.

If you entrust us with the supply of a service, we will only register and store your personal data as required for the supply of the service.

If you sign up for a newsletter with your e-mail address, we will use your e-mail address in order to inform you within the newsletter until you unsubscribe the newsletter.

Collection and Storage of Usage Data

For the optimisation of our websites we collect and store data, such as visited website, date and time of access, the website which you are coming from and so on.

An automated processing is conducted for the generation of weekly access statistics which are provided for TUB departments if requested for analysis. For this purpose the log data is anonymised by removal of the last two octets of IP addresses and removal of GET parameters from the URLs. This ensures that the statistics are based on anonymous data not allowing a reference to natural persons and their correspondent user data. The non-anonymised data will be deleted automatically after two weeks and will not be archived; a permanent storage is excluded. The anonymised log files and access statistics are stored for a longer period.

Some websites at TU Berlin contain banner ads in collaboration with VariFast GmbH and by utilisation of ad servers of Adition technologies AG (Adition). This is done by using cookies. These are session cookies and other temporary cookies serving to count the visitors in order to limit the ad delivery to a predefined amount. Your IP address will not be submitted to these firms. No data suitable for identification but just technical data will be collected. All data undergo only anonymised statistical evaluation.BY using the ad server, just traffic data are temporarily stored, the capture of which is allowed in this respect without explicit agreement of the user. All data privacy regulations are observed by VariFast and Adition. Upon clicking the following link collection of anonymised data will be terminated. In this case Adition replaces the current cookie by an opt out cookie. If this opt out cookie has been deleted Adition will be unable to detect that an opt out has taken place, and the opt out has to be repeated. Link to opt out: https://www.adition.com/en/privacy-opted-out/

Some websites additionally use Matomo (formerly known as Piwik, ref. www.matomo.org) to anonymously collect web statistics, based on the qualified interest of TUB at it, used for optimization and marketing purposes according to Art. 6 Par. 1 lit. f DSGVO. Websites using Matomo will always show a servicebox at the right indicating that. We are using our own Matomo installation hosted on servers at the TU Berlin following the recommendations of the "Unabhängiges Landeszentrum für Datenschutz" (ULD) Schleswig Holstein. Your data will be anonymized directly after visiting a website. Due to a unique cookie accesses can be assigned to a person without being able to identify that person. Aside of accessed websites and files we additionally save for example your OS, browser, browser plugins (e.g. "Is the flashplayer available?"), screen resolution, your approximate location (e.g. "Berlin", but not your concrete address) and the duration of your visit.

If you do not consent to collection and analysis of such data, done by Matomo, click the below opt-out option. This causes an opt out cookie be placed in your browser thus disabling further data collection. In case of deletion of your cookies you must opt out again.

Opt-out option for Matomo (formerly known as Piwik):

Data Usage for a Specific Purpose

We collect, process and store your personal data exclusively TUB internal for the purpose you notified us about and thereby we follow the principle of purpose related data usage. Without your explicit consent your personal data will not be given to third parties as long as it is not necessary for the supply of a service or execution of an agreement. The forwarding of data to requesting governmental institutions and authorities is only conducted based on legal regulations resp. if we legally obligated by a judicial decision.

We take university internal data privacy very seriously. Our employees are bound to discretion and the compliance with data privacy laws by contract.

Right of Access to Personal Data

You can retrieve information about your stored personal data without giving reasons at any time free of charge. Please contact the address provided in the legal details of the website.

We will be pleased to assist you if you have any further questions about our data privacy information.

Please note that data privacy regulations and handling of data privacy (e.g. at Google) can change from time to time making it necessary to inform oneself about changes of data privacy laws and company policies.

This data privacy statement only applies for content of TUB webservers which provide this data privacy statement and does not cover linked websites of external webservers.